This invention relates generally to farming equipment and more particularly concerns equipment for planting grass roots or clippings in compacted or untilled soil, fallow ground or established vegetation.
The process of planting Bermuda grass roots or clippings or the like normally involves the breaking and furrowing of ground, fertilization of the broken ground, distribution of the roots or clippings into the fertilized ground, covering over of the sprigged ground with loose soil and compaction of the loose soil over the roots or clippings. Equipment presently known often requires more than one pass over the ground to be sprigged to accomplish all of these steps. Some equipment has been developed to accomplish these tasks in a single pass, but usually more than one operator is required to properly use the equipment. In addition, the known equipment often causes undesirable disruption of the ground surface. Furthermore, the feed rate of sprigs to the ground is generally a function of an independent drive mechanism operating the feed system and, therefore, it is necessary to maintain the motion of the equipment across the ground at a constant speed in order to maintain a constant bushels-per-acre distribution of sprigs over the ground.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a sprigger than can be operated by one person. It is a further object of this invention to provide a sprigger which distributes grass roots or clippings at a rate corresponding to the rate of movement of the sprigger so as to achieve a constant bushels-per-acre feed rate regardless of sprigger speed. A further object of this invention is to provide a sprigger which causes minimal disruption to the ground surface being sprigged. Another object of this invention is to provide a sprigger which permits all of the steps necessary to plant live grass roots or clippings in compacted or untilled soil, fallow ground or established vegetation to be accomplished in a single pass of the equipment over the ground.